mindit-confidence

mindit-confidence

The seventh of the eight forces. Run this when the question is "how do we actually know."

The force

Every design decision is backed by something. Sometimes that something is real research — interviews, observations, data, prior experiments. Sometimes it is convention — "this is how everyone does it." Sometimes it is intuition — "I think users would want this." Sometimes it is assumption — "we believe users will."

These are not equal. Confidence is highest with triangulated, fresh, broad, well-mechanized evidence. Confidence is lowest with single-source, stale, narrow, weakly-mechanized claims, or with no claims at all.

Confidence asks: where on this spectrum does this decision actually live?

The goal is not to require evidence for every decision. The goal is to know which decisions you are flying blind on, so you can decide whether to invest in research or move forward on conviction.

When to run this

• The user states a belief about users ("users want X," "users will not Y," "users prefer Z").
• The user mentions research, interviews, A/B tests, surveys, analytics, or "what the data says."
• The user has just shipped or is about to ship a hypothesis-driven design.
• The user uses phrases like "we know," "we believe," "I think," "users tend to."

How to analyze

1. Surface the claims. Walk through the design and extract every claim about users it implicitly or explicitly makes. ("Users want fewer steps," "users skim before reading," "users will trust this badge.")

2. For each claim, ask three questions:

   • What evidence backs this? Research, data, convention, intuition, assumption.
   • How fresh is the evidence? When was it produced? Has the user base changed since?
   • How broad is the evidence? One user, ten, thousands? One segment or all segments?

3. Score the criteria below. Each criterion measures one dimension of evidence quality.

4. Distinguish "thin evidence" from "no evidence." Both are valid findings but they get different fixes. Thin evidence can be strengthened. No evidence requires deciding whether to invest in research or proceed on conviction.